Apophis

I won this guy in a writing contest!  I was so surprised and I’m so happy!  The prompt was “For this Faro I'd like you to tell me about how they found their mask!” and you can see my entry below.

How did they find their mask;

These dreams, they won’t stop. That’s what I told everyone after the moon reached its highest point in the sky. The same time every night, same dream. It all started a year ago, I was down at the train tracks with my friends when an odd train passed me by. There was only 1 boxcar, moving slowly, creaking loudly as it passed. My friends dared me to go inside. I was insecure and wanted to impress them, so I did. I slowly pressed my paw against the wooden boards within the box car, and just as I did, a creature emerged from the darkness with a glowing mask. My friends ran away at the sight of it, and I was left there. It stared at me for a few seconds, before softly speaking… “I’m here for you.”. I blacked out instantly, and woke up in my bed. That’s when the dreams began… Every night, I had a dream of the creature, repeating various phrases. “Don’t leave me.” “Come back to me.” “I need you.”. The dream would always end with me crying out, then I’d wake up. I tried to tell my friends, but they thought I was just traumatized by that night at the tracks, and said I was cowardly for having nightmares about something so small and insignificant. Maybe they were right, I wondered… but the dreams raged on for weeks, months. I tried to ignore them but they wouldn’t stop, I was strangely drawn to them. Every single night… Finally, I had enough. I snuck away and staggered back to those train tracks, on the brink of insanity. There was nothing there. I waited for a bit, then I heard it, the creaking of the boxcar. It emerged from the darkness and 2 glowing eyes met my gaze from within. The boxcar stopped. The creature slowly approached me. It only said this, “Finally, the guardian is here.”. The creature vanished, and its mask fell to the ground. I approached it cautiously, and that’s when it flew up onto my face, forcefully attaching itself. I struggled to remove it but it was as if it was a part of me. I saw life, death, the afterlife, everything in between, and blacked out again. When I woke up, I couldn’t see anything, but I heard whispers. I looked around and finally, I saw dozens of glowing eyes and teeth. They said, “Welcome, friend.”. But that was only a dream, or so I thought at the time. I woke up in what was my perception of reality this time, still wearing the mask. I kept having dreams about all of them, the glowing eyes… and eventually, we became friends… no, family. Everyone else thinks I’m crazy, for believing that my dreams are real, but a separate world. My “friends” stopped hanging out with me, but I don’t care. These days, I’d rather sleep, than live in this waking realm of misery. Is this the brink of insanity? The deepest gorge imaginable? Or, perhaps, this is just my home, and I didn’t know it for so long.